Some more beads of course

Here are a few older beads....

These are organics of the first variety I made. These have a heavy coat of clear and are barrel shaped or tubes shaped. I still like the way these look. In fact, perhaps I will make some today ! The one on the left has a neat band of blue that really is hard to create.

Here is an older lapidary bead. Its hot worked and then after its kiln annealed its cut or ground down on a lapidary wheel. Then the grits are moved up in size until you polish it up to shiny again. Note that this beads is ground flat on two sides which are pointing up and down. If they were facing the camera, you could see through the bead. Compare that first generation lap bead with this one here....

Id have to say that this guy is like 3rd or 4th generation lap bead. Is square and has a window ground into it and you can see through it. Not a bad bead. There is something missing from it though. I should also mention that making a normal bead takes me about 30 min in the torch, then there is the time in the kiln. These then have added time on the lapidary grinder which means that by the time these are done, I have quite a bit of time invested in creating these guys. I like the green over top of the ivory and clear. There are actually two different colors of transparent green used in this bead to give shade and complexity to the green component of it. I kind of wanted to put something inside the ivory to look at so you wouldnt see that mandrel hole running left to right there....

5th generation lapidary donut right here !! Drum roll.... Ta da ! Now on this baby, Im using a large mandrel to get that large hole. This is about 30mm across total, and its already sold. Each of the round transparent windows is a separate piece. I make the round "cane" then nip it into 1/4 inch pieces and assemble them around the mandrel. They are all round the mandrel, I melt the whole piece up well, round it out and shape it. Then once its cool, I get to work grinding. When hot, the ends of the windows tend to close up. Grinding them 'opens' them up again. I have to thank my bead daddy Tom Holland for showing me how to do this. Sage and Tom Holland are in my opinion the mom and pop of American beadmaking. Im sure that there are others who deserve lots of credit but since I love them, they get the credit here.

Now a few places to check out if you havent already seen them.....

AZ bead museum-http://www.thebeadmuseum.com/

ISGB (international society of glass beadmakers)-http://www.ibead.com/visual_arts.aspx

Ibead-http://www.ibead.com/visual_arts.aspx

Wetcanvas- www.wetcanvas.com

Glass artists.com-http://www.glassartists.org/

My bead pal and awesome beadmaker Terri Caspary-http://casparylampwork.com/buy-beads.php

Awesome artist friends of ours who make very nice jewlery, and paintings-http://www.bethpiver.com/

Non-bead related blog by my web buddy about all things MI and river adventures- http://www.riverrant.blogspot.com/

Thats all for now....